On this voyage, of course, there were enough pretty and dizzy young flappers to bring even the most carnal of ship's officers to a standstill, or at least down to "slow ahead'. There was a party of twenty-six girls from Louisiana State, returning by second-class from a tour of Italy, half of whom were still giddy from the romantic attentions of Neapolitan romeos, and the other half of whom (ignored by the Neapolitan romeos) were grimly determined to win the romantic attentions of anyone, just anyone, before the Arcadia crossed the three-mile limit. There was a female dance troupe from Yonkers, sponsored by Happiness candy, who were on their way back from a tour of American troops in Europe. And there was a breathless, bare-shouldered, eyelid-fluttering, hotly frustrated abundance of businessmen's wives and mistresses, just aching to be taken into a secluded corner and shown the phosphorescence of the Arcadia's wake on a moonlit night in mid-Atlantic.
It was one of these women ('fallow Floras', the chief second-class steward always called them, since they had been ploughed in years gone by, but not recently) who was now brazenly admiring Dick from the promenade deck below the bridge. She was forty years old at least, but she had a delicate fine-boned face that had kept its freshness, and responded well to Exotica night cream. She wore a green cloche hat which matched her eyes, and a ankle-length raccoon coat, which she kept wrapped around herself in a way that suggested she was very warm in there, warm as toast, and wouldn't Dick like to be as warm as that, too? She had a spattering of pale freckles across her nose which gave her the appearance of impish innocence.
When Dick looked quickly in her direction, the woman smiled and gave him a squiggly little wave with her fingers. Dick blushed, and touched the peak of his cap in acknowledgement.
Ralph Peel, the second officer, came up behind Dick from the wheelhouse, his hands clasped behind his back. "Ho ho," he said, in a voice as thick as rubbed flake tobacco, "that one's taken a fancy to you. Now you're for it."
"You know h-h-her?" asked Dick.
"Course I do. You should recognise her yourself. Or p'raps you only read the Boys" Own Paper."
"Who is she?"
Ralph Peel came to the rail of the boat deck and happily folded his arms over it. He was a short stubby man from Portsmouth, Hampshire, with a face that was always glossy from shaving, and eyebrows that were so dark they looked as if he had pencilled them in with mascara. He prided himself on his sleek hairy chest, and his sleek hairy back, and his very sleek and hairy legs. Sir Peregrine had nicknamed him "the Performing Seal'.
"That lady," said Ralph Peel, saluting her cheekily, "is Lady Diana FitzPeny."
"You d-d-don't m-mean the Lady Diana FitzP-FitzP-'
"The same," Ralph Peel told him, with malicious amusement. "The one who was supposed to be riding half of the House of the Lords, and a good seven per cent of the Conservative Front Bench, while her husband was out in the Sudan trying to build railways for the dervishes."
"B-but she's w-waving at me," said Dick.
"So she is. And that's why you're for it. I warn you, Dick my boy, once a lady like that has taken a liking to you, you won't get away without giving her what she wants."
"Oh, d-dear," said Dick.
Ralph nudged him with his elbow. "I don't know what you're worrying about. She's not exactly a spring chicken, I'll grant you. But if half of the peers of the realm like her, and if seven per cent of Stanley Baldwin's lot think she's worth a go round the park, she can't be all that bad. I saw her photo in the Sunday Pic. Nice pear-shaped English upper-class lady, I'd say. Plenty to get hold of. You should enjoy yourself. Perhaps she'll teach you how to eat your peas off your knife without dropping them all down your shirtfront. You could do with a bit of class, you could. Now's your chance."
"God," said Dick, "you're absolutely incoh-incoh—"
"Incoherent?"
"Incoh—"
"Incorruptible? Incommunicado? In Korea?"
"Incorrigible," said Dick, at last.
"I don't know," Ralph Peel told him. "I just hope they never put you in charge of a ship when we have to make an emergency turn to port. Can you imagine it? "Hard ap—, hard ap—, hard ap—!" We'd be sitting on the bottom of the sea before you managed to say "hard a-porti" "
"My speech imp—speech impediment isn't all that bad," retorted Dick. "It only gets worse when p-people like you start r-ragging me."
Ralph Peel's smile widened with the contentment of a man who has all the authority he can happily handle, all the drink he ever needs, plenty of good food, a different woman every week, and one pound a day. He was-a man without any complexes whatsoever. He smoked, drank, danced with the lady passengers, and had the longest and most preposterous line about the time he had wrestled a shark with his bare hands in the swimming pool of the old Eximious (a freak wave having tossed it on board). To him, Dick's callow alarm at the attention he was receiving from the notorious Lady FitzPerry was a good broad joke. Wonderful. He couldn't wait to tell Monty Willowby about it.
"Can't you just picture it?" he said. "Big white wobbly thighs bulging out of shiny silk stockings. It's the real blue-blooded thing, Dick my lad. Education by Roedean, knickers by Harrods, wedding ring by Aspreys. She'll devour you alive and you'll enjoy every bite."
Dick glanced out of the corner of his eyes at the furry Lady FitzPerry, and she was still smiling at him. "I think I've got a heh," he said. Then, "I think I've got a heh," then, "I think I've got a headache."
Ralph Peel slapped him good-naturedly on the back. "You'll get over it," he said. "Or under it, eh? Ho ho."
"I suppose you're already fixed up," said Dick. "Well, you must be. I've never known you not f-fixed up."
"Well, to tell you the truth, I am," admitted Ralph. "A rather tricky little sheba from the University of Somewhere Boring, in the middle of America. Very cute. Blonde. Plenty of "It". But there are one or two more I've got my eye on. An heiress, one of them. Very tasty."
"That sh-should suit you d-down to the g-ground," said Dick. "Sh-she's full of "It" and y-you're full of sh—sh—."
Ralph slapped him on the back again. "Never mind, Dick. You'll get over it one day. Meanwhile, enjoy yourself with Lady FitzPee."
At that moment, Sir Peregrine emerged from the captain's sitting-room, which was next to the navigation room. At the same moment, Dick said, "Shit', and Sir Peregrine stared at him as if he were quite mad, and said, "I beg your pardon, Mr Charles?"
Dick turned maroon with embarrassment. He didn't feel any better when Lady FitzPerry waved at him again, a quick girlish wave, and called, "Coo-ee!"
Sir Peregrine said, with statuesque patience, "Do you think it might be advisable for me to go back to my sitting-room and come out afresh?"
By now, the Keys cutter from Dublin harbour had come alongside, and its passengers were coming aboard. As it turned out, there were only five of them: Denis O'Hara from the Eire Credit Bank, and his lady wife; Colleen Sullivan, the Irish singer, who had been booked to appear in the long-running Abie's Irish Rose on Broadway; the American golfer Jack Andrews; and a very tall fleshy-lipped man of about fifty who wore a broad-brimmed hat and a calf-length summer overcoat, and about whom nothing was announced. He spoke with a distinctive New York accent, that was all anybody could tell.
The newcomers were brought by Monty Willowby up to the boat deck, where Sir Peregrine shook them abstractedly by the hand, and wellcomed them aboard, and trusted they would enjoy their voyage on his little ship (Ha, ha), and invited them, with all the charm of a man who is trying to remember where he left his second pair of spectacles, to share his table that evening.